SLForsburg (susan_forsburg at qm.salk.edu) wrote:
:wardp at herald.usask.ca (Pearse Ward) wrote:
: (stuff deleted)
: > There are
: > currently enough women in science to fill 50% of available positions and
: > serve as mentors for the next generation if equality of opportunity,
: > parity of esteem, and a willingness to re-evaluate traditional ideas on
: > how science is done (hours of work, job sharing, family leave etc) are
: > made the main goals......
: Pearse's comments, inside the affirmative action thread, made me stop
: for a moment. My department recently had a job search and fewer than
: 20% of the applicants were women. yet at the postdoc and student
: level, numbers are indeed around 50/50. Informal talks with colleagues
: at other institutions suggest the same observation. New thread, then.
: Where are the women?
: Why arent they applying?
this is part of the point I was trying to make. My recent search for a
post-doc was, to say the least, trying, and I frequently found myself
asking whether it was all worth it, especially since trying to get a real
job is only going to be worse. I don't think my search was made worse
because I'm a woman, I just think there's lots more people out there than
jobs, and that the pyramid has a pretty small tip and a broad base. So
when you're depressed, and wondering whether to pack it all in, it makes
a big difference if you know people like you who have jobs, families, who
aren't miserable. If, on the other hand, you say to yourself " not only
is it hard for anyone to find a job, but on top of it you won't get
tenure because you've had a child", you start looking for less stressful
alternatives.
Pearse brought up the idea that people respect you less because they
think you were hired for questionable reasons. I don't think that
attitude lasts very long if the hiree does a good job - people remember
what you've done lately. The damage is if the hiree buys into it.